So tonight on the Freecycle list this message came over:

I have some home decor pictures that someone gave me at work but they aren’t my taste. If you would like these they are yours. Frame is a cherry wood I do believe with gold framing. If you are going to sell these, forget it! I know these are worth money but I would like someone to get them that will use them. I think there’s three pictures. I would like these gone cause they are in my living room now. No sob stories please. Again, these are just pictures.

Obviously someone who is as tired of the BS people try to feed you as I am! (I’ve posted some of the ridiculous posts before) I decided to give her something to laugh about, so I emailed her this:

The Lord told me my prayers for decoration would be answered! I had asked his gracious love for oak frames, but beggars can’t be choosers!

See, three years ago my baby died of spontaneous combustion SIDS (a genetic condition in my family) while asleep in his crib and burned down our trailer, which caught the propane tank out back, which took down the telephone pole that the whole trailer park stole our cable from. I lost everything I owned including my first edition Lynyrd Skynyrd 8-track tape collection! I don’t care what they say them CDs do not sound as good.

Anyway, this all happened during a thunderstorm so when I ran out of the fiery inferno to call for help I was struck by a bolt of lightening. When the police arrived they saw the burn marks on my bare feet and my smoldering hair and deduced I was an arsonist! No amount of convincing seems to work! Just because I have a conviction for arson when I burned down my baby daddy’s house don’t mean I set my own danged trailer on fire! That’s crazy!

Since I’ve been in prison my husband has taken up with my slutty sister, my father died, my momma started turning tricks again to make ends meet and my dog ran into traffic and was killed by the mailman.

As you can see, I could certainly use any spot of brightness I can get in my tiny grey jail cell!

Praise Jesus and God bless!

Wanda Dumple

(PS Are any of the pictures clowns? I like clowns!)

I’m hoping she gets the joke…

I found my slipper, spank my butt can call me Cinderella!

I know I hadn’t mentioend I’d lost it here, but it was a point of much consternation here at the Miester von Mannhausen.

And there was much rejoicing — until I realized the wash (where it had snuck in) had ruined it and it didn’t fit now like the other and put holes in the sole and so I have to buy a new pair anyway. I loved that pair, they were like fuzzy easy bake ovens for my feet. Winter is a coming.
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I need a job, if anyone local knows of a place worthy of my unique talents and abilities, let me know.
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I’ve had to put Sophie the giant retard calico in a cone collar this last week. She got a big case of OCD about grooming her nether regions and gave herself a brazilian with a bad case of razor rash. Of course the first few days of watching her hit corners with it then just stop dead and stare at the wall for three hours were hilairous.
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Our Directv tivo I thought was dying is being kept in the land of the living after finding out that they Directv won’t send you a replacement that is a tivo because the agreement ran out, though updates and support will continue for god knows how much longer. They now send the generic DTV DVR, and i’m sorry there is a HUGE difference. Tivo is like a family member. The guy at DTV thought I was nuts and actually was surprisewd when I said I was upset at getting a generic DVR, but if you have one yo know what I’m saying (right Shannon?) It thinks about you, it knows what you like and records it for you and tries to make you happy, It’s like the perfect spouse.

Anyway I managed to track that the horrid noise ours is making is the fan (since this house is a fur, and dust trap thanks to the steel plant) I bought a replacement on ebay for $4 (inc shipping) which should be here soon. I think thats the only thing wrong with it so I’ll be sneding back the new DTV DVR unopened to Directv and will be asking for the last two years of monthly payments for replacement as a bill credit. We can buy a working replacement of the model we have on ebay for like $20 or so, so we have a back up there as well. Just keep swapping hard drives and junk I guess. That’s what the other dtv guys on the Tivo communtiy forums do. I guess alot of people have been returning the new nontivo units, and complaining, so who knows maybe it will come back.

Top this all off with the fact that someone on freecycle today gave me a nearly new, and I mean that, 80-hour series 2 Tivo in box and all for free. They said they got it for xmas in 2005 and used it for six months and boxed it back up when they didn’t use it much. How sweet is that? So if the one we have drops out for real we’ll go to pure Tivo with even more whistles and bells with the directv alone. We’ll have to sub to Tivo seperatly ($12 mo), but once you drop the replacement plan monthly fee ($6) and the DTV DVR monthly fee ($6) it pays for itself. But in the mean time It’ll live on a shelf in the back room.
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I scare myself with my ability to make incredibly cute crafty things as of late. ew.
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I haven’t mentioned it here, mainly because I forgot, but I’ve been asked to present said cute things in a book by Lark Books to be called “Creative Pincushions” that they are prepping to come out in 2007. I’m pretty excited. Cool part of this is they discovered the Flickr Pincushions group and went “WOW, we need to do a book on these!” and asked several of us specifially to submit participate. I will have several projects in there it looks like. (Cha ching!) See? Flickr pays.

So today someone posted a want for a “trestle table with drop leaf for our small kitchen”

Now if you dont know what a trestle table is look here and see that the whole drop leaf thing will be kinda hard. I bet they thought “Trestle” was a brand name they heard on those fancy furniture store commericals.

I just got an im from someone I don’t know – not unusual with as many sites as I have. This time it was someone from the Freecycle Yahoogroup who saw on Yahoo that I was logged on. I’ve talked about the ballsy grabby attitude on freecycle before (check the archives).

crissiemwells 9:05 AM
good morning

jen segrest 9:06 AM
hey

crissiemwells 9:07 AM
i know you dont know me im a new member of freecycle and was wondering if you have anything on there i might be interested in

hello did you leave me

jen segrest 9:14 AM
so you are just directly begging

no when I have something i’ll post it thsanks

crissiemwells 9:16 AM
no im not begging thank you

jen segrest 9:16 AM
uhm, yeah ya are

approaching someone unsolicitated to ask for things.
that’s begging, toots.

crissiemwells 9:17 AM
your very rude and i hop you get nowhere in life

jen segrest 9:17 AM
you beat me to it

Just the assortment of items in this CheapCycle (versus freecycle) post kinda makes the brain stutter…

stuffed animals 1.00 each
scooby stuff 1.50 each
scooby sleeping bag for kids 5.00
tongue rings 1.00 each
vcr 15.00
gift wrap homemade 1.00 sheet
cheap baby test found couple more 1.50 each
ovulation sits found more 2.00 each
if anyone can help please email me i need to make another 30 or so to pay bills and rent thanks

Now here’s the clincher for me, baby stuff, multiple tongue rings, and the “found more” on the ovulation and pregnancy tests. Someone has a very active private life.

Here’s the latest jaw dropping inductee:

“my family is going to an all-inclusive resort in La Romana Dominican Republic, in June…unscape Del Mar for 2 weeks…could pick up anything related at your best time…coming from Bellbrook, basic Spanish guides would be great also since none of us speak the language”

Afford to go to a “all inclusive resort” and can’t afford a book store?

Pic I took today. The left is a dirty bootleg take-off of my Spotnik pattern in a Palm case I put my ipod in. It keeps it safe and snug as it’s padded and has hard sides, it’s really nice for ipod protection. My bro got it clerance at Target so I don’t feel too bad buying a bootleg of my own design.

The right is a licensed copy of Swanky Mo from decalgirl.com, I love them so much. And so do other people I gather by the royalty checks!

Seen on the FreeCycle list today:
Wanted Any Collage Text Books academic books, Math and science: Any and All Kinds:

Looks like she could use English too. So I wrote and said “Hey that’s spelled college (because “collage” is a paper craft). Now, I didn’t say dimwit or anything and I got this back:
YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO BE RUDE: MY 9 YR WROTE THE MESSAGE FOR ME: I THOUGHT SHE DONE A GREAT JOB!!!!!!!

OMG. Done? DONE A good job? Oh sorry, OMG: DONE?
Do I even have to wonder if the kid is homeschooled by mom?

Don’t mind me I’ll be crying in the corner wishing for spontaneous teleportation to Canada.

As long time readers know, I belong to a local email list called Freecycle (I call it “moochcycle” that is a place for your unwanted crap to find a new owner no money involved. It’s a great way to dump something fast. We’ve gotten some good stuff, and given some away that we just didn’t want or need and wasn’t worth our time to garage sale or Ebay and didn’t want to make the effort to lug to Goodwill.

Christmas time has the want ads out ranking the offers as usual with people asking for all kinds of pretty ballsy stuff – christmas trees, presents for their children, new game systems, designer handbags, specific breeds of puppies… big screen tv’s.

This time I had an oriental-ish area rug that I needed rid of. We got it at Ikea for a whopping $35 a few years ago but my cat Sophie informed us in no uncertain terms hat were strictly verboten in her house. After cleaning it with OdorMute and a power washer (and a weekend drying over the fence in the summer sun) we rolled it up had since been rolled up in the back room for the last year gathering dog hair. So I put it up on freecycle… I said exactly what I said above about it. Within 24 hours I had twenty responses. Some even hit me up on Yahoo IM to beg for it.

Finally, After I gave it away I sent this:

Subject: TAKEN: Area rug

All gone, stop emailing me! I wish I had twenty 5-year old $35 IKEA rugs coated in dog hair so everyone could get one (Maybe not). But, alas, I don’t.

To those who wrote and assuming if you just acted as If i’d already said I’d give you the rug it would somehow be true… You went to the bottom of the list. Same with those of you giving me long drawn out sob stories or playing the “God Bless” religious card game. That will always get the opposite result you were hoping for with me.

And to those who asked me if I’d deliver the rug to you “in the name of Christmas” because “Middletown is so far away” – Well, maybe you need to reexamine your life and figure out why you might in fact be so poor you can’t afford a $35 junk rug coated in dog hair for yourself. Might be enlightening.

It was a used rug, people, not a winning lottery ticket!

jen

And with that, BAH HUMBUG!

Which is my way of saying poking stupid people with no sense of humor on purpose to make them look even stupider.

I’ve written before about my FreeCycle list I’m on. Today another batch of truly befuddling requests came in. One of the them was asking for a 23 foot box truck for their burgeoning moving business “since I have kids to raise”. I’ve been seeing lots of requests for cars recently as well.

I have come to call it MoochCycle and read the most preposterous posts to my hubby for laughs. Some of the class A dreamers ask for their things to be in great condition and not need of repair. Some are so cheap they ask for things like USB cables which you can get for $6.

The only thing people haven’t asked for is houses… so I decided to.

We live next to AK Steel (and I mean NEXT TO, 100 feet from the property line, 400 yards from a fire stack). Due to all the pollution and particulate (that will only get worse due Bush lowering the clean air laws) we’d like to get out of here while we’re alive… so we want to move, but we can’t since we can’t afford it. If we stay we’ll die of some nasty form of cancer. So what the hell!

The ideal house would be:
Wooded semi-rural, 3 bedroom, two floors with basement, a spa or hot tub, privacy fence back yard for the dogs, and a 2 car garage. LOTS of storage. Should be 5 years old or newer – not in need or repair or in the middle of remodeling – we’re not handy.

If it was designed in the Prarie, Tudor or Contemporary Modern architectural style and had a view, a gourmet kitchen with SubZero fridge, had formal gardens or a pond out back, was fully wired for broadband/phone/cable/sat or at least had a wifi point, and on top of a goldmine or oil deposit – that would be optimal! Houses located in Europe are fine.

We’d need to fully furnished too, our belongings are less than new for such a nice house and may not fit the architectural style.

Got a few immediate emails from folks who got the joke (“I’m still laughing, that was a gret post!” or “I just gave one just like that away!” ) i bet most on the list will be stupid to get that it IS a joke.

America – NOT home to sarcastic irony.

I recently joined a FreeCycle local mailing list on Yahoogroups.

The idea behind freecycle is that you have things that are worth something, but dont want to deal with trying to sell, you offer them on freecyle and others on the list will greatfully take them of your hands, usually same day.

For instance, We just today picked up a steel pick up truck ladder rack/overhead hauling frame made exactly for the make/model of truck we have. Mr Man is quite pleased today as all he had to do was drive to the guys house and pick it up. Free. It’s even timely as he is doping gutters and lent his 21 foot ladder to his brother and it’s it’s too long to put in the truck when collapsed. It won’t live on there full time, just when he needs it I’ll prolly serve as a modern backyard sculpture the rest of the time.

It’s a good idea, and for the most part the mail has been offers of items with wante ads much less in volume – at least until a big article came out in the newspaper last week and 500 whiny needy moochers came out of the woodwork.

The last four days have been nothing but outrageous wanted ads for high ticket items; Pianos, truck, specific vintage muscle cars, digital cameras (one person has asked several times for this one)…

One guy has especially big dreams, now mind you these are things he wants people to give him for free: “looking for 20 to 25 ft boats in good condition (never sunk)” and “wanted: tickets to bristol motor speedway – stock car racing”. Riiiight. Don’t we all. Why not just ask for gold bars or extraneous diamond jewelry? A Jaguar? A monkey?

One person today was begging for chairs and couches “for our furniture ministry”, now I know they probably meant “future ministry” but of course I couldn’t help but shoot out an email back to the list:

Good, because those heathen Ottomans and lustful Boudoir tables need ministering to, you betcha. (Wonder if they will get the part about heathen Ottomans…

Anyway all this begging just ticks me off, but not enough to leave the list yet since it’s still early into the influx of grabby whiners to see if it’s something that will get better.

Addendum: Some schmuck just asked for Beige floormats for her LEXUS. She has a Lexus and can’t afford floormats? Gimme a break.